Hi everyone! So I thought I was done with fanedits after making J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Guess not! For my second fanedit, I’ve decided to make a version of Rogue One that revolves entirely around the Battle of Scarif. This was the most exciting sequence in the film by far, and I feel would make for an exciting short film.

In order to make The Battle of Scarif stand on its own (meaning you wouldn’t necessarily need to see all of Rogue One to understand what happens in this cut), I’m making the following edits and adjustments:

Insertion of an opening crawl (of course!). It will summarize the events that occur during the course of Rogue One that lead to the Scarif battle.

First scene of the film is the confrontation between Krennic and Darth Vader, with some adjusted dialogue for Vader.

The Rebels will still bicker over going to war, but this stuff will be trimmed. As will Cassian’s super long monologue about the Rebellion.

I never found myself that invested in Rogue One’s characters to begin with, so a number of “character” scenes and lines will be adjusted. The main focus of the edit will be the battle itself and the actual recovery of the Death Star plans.

Insertion of classic Star Wars music cues from John Williams. I’ve been going through the entire saga OST and will be dropping tracks where appropriate. Most people have agreed that Giacchino’s score just didn’t cut it. Not that I totally blame him; apparently he had 3-4 weeks to write and conduct everything.

Various SFX enhancements. This is big. Because I’m adding new music cues throughout the film, this means that I have to remove some of Giacchino’s cues. Unfortunately the music sometimes bleeds across the 5.1 audio channels with the sound effects, meaning that I’ve had to rebuild the sound design for entire scenes where John Williams’ music is now. This has been by far the most time-consuming part of the edit, but thankfully there are some really great Star Wars SFX libraries online that I’ve been able to use for this.

A light sprinkling of those old-school wipes and transitions from the other Star Wars films. Why not?

The film ends with Vader slicing and dicing Rebel scum, and watching as the Tantive IV flies away. Leia’s scene has been cut.

With credits and everything, the runtime of the edit will be around 45-50 minutes.

So there you go. If you’re in the mood to watch Rogue One but would rather skip the attempts at character development and Forest Whitaker’s pet tentacle monster, pull up Rogue One: The Battle of Scarif and jump straight to the ‘splosions. As with my Hobbit fanedit, The Battle of Scarif will be edited in HD with 5.1 surround sound to ensure the highest possible audio/visual quality. I'm already 80-90% finished with the edit, and will likely release it in the next few weeks. In the meantime, head over to the VIDEOS PAGE where I'll be uploading scene excerpts for your enjoyment. Thanks!